Ali Smith and Actual Joy

“…the idea that pain is always looking for somewhere to land is central to the book, and also part of Smith’s answer to the question of the purpose of art in end times. Her writing…is a place for pain to land.”

The above quote comes from Sarah Moss in this review .

This is perhaps the best assessment of Ali Smith’s work post How to Be Both. Though it may be the underlying purpose of all her writing.

I read the bulk of Smith’s latest novel Glyph last night, because Smith, for all her play and experimenting, pens quite readable books. Even when punning (which she’s very fond of) and listing (no shortage of that in her recent work) and digging into etymologies and layering narratives, Smith crafts pleasing prose. There is, to my mind, no better evidence of her grace and play than in Hotel World, still my favorite of hers, likely never to be replaced. That was an early novel; what she’s been doing lately is not all that different from her past efforts, but where Hotel World is fractured into five overlapping narrations that maintain surprising tightness, the Seasonal Quartet (plus a companion novel because, fuck it, why not?) and the recent duology (Gliff and Glyph) make space for maybe not looser connections but certainly something baggier. The Accidental, Smith’s third novel, also changes narrators each chapter and stays, more or less, centered. How to Be Both is split in half, the order of the narratives switched depending on which (not quite) copy one holds.

None of this structural play is terribly new, at least not to readers familiar with Woolf or Faulkner, and none of these conceits overwhelm Smith’s storytelling. They enhance her craft rather than wag the dog. But reviews will inevitably focus on these elements, hopefully not at the expense of engaging with Smith’s concerns, namely: how to be a person in threatening times.

At least this seems to be Smith’s concern since she started the Seasonal Quartet. Those four (er, five) books were written and published within a year of each other and make direct reference to contemporary life. To be sure, Smith could not have imagined that Covid would be a part of her project, but as she mined contemporary concerns, the pandemic needed its novels (Summer and Companion Piece) topping off a project that started as Brexit was poisoning the air (Autumn) and examined the struggles of community and family (Winter), the very real detention of immigrants and the possibility of hope (Spring). Connection and loss run through each book reflecting our time of infinite possibility stalled by inertia. We are enslaved to technologies that promise liberation, in thrall to distractions marketed as innovations, and ruled by governments that speak of freedom while they brutalize those most vulnerable. Add a climate crisis and a pandemic to the mix and things seem pretty goddamn bleak. Yet each novel in the quartet offers joy, a word I have a hard time using, coopted, as it is, by algorithms and made the mantra of a generation I suspect has been made to expect endless dopamine. Smith is by no means a Good Vibes Only writer—she does not shy away from the reality, however dark, and yet her novels always feel rooted in the possibility that we could change things. We really could.

Maggie Smith’s (not the actress) poem “Good Bones” achieves the same end: confrontation of the bleakness of existence with the reminder that “you could make this place beautiful.” The two Smiths share this optimism. Though, looking closer, is the poem really optimistic? It posits the idea that one could make the world beautiful the way a realtor “walking you though a real shithole, chirps on / about good bones.” Smith the poet is trying to sell the world to her children who she is tasked with protecting and preparing. Not easy!

Smith the novelist is similarly examining the forces that make existence precarious, dangerous, dehumanizing, and delightful. I can’t always say I finish an Ali Smith book feeling ready to fight the power, not even after Spring, a book I assigned in a class called Power and Oppression. I wanted the students to see a story where the central horror, detention of migrants, was confronted with an absurd character, a girl who magically walks into a prison and asks the guards why they are doing what they do. This precocious young girl, named Florence, meets a guard, Brit (Smith is quite fond of on-the-nose character names) and convinces her to change her ways, which are not inherently cruel. Brit just needs a job. Florence dubs them “Florence and the machine” because Smith is having fun.

My students saw Florence as a stand in for Greta Thunberg. They understood the idea of a young person demanding that the world do a better job. And they saw what I was trying to do by making them read such a book. And they know that they could make the world beautiful. But they also need jobs.

How to square that circle? Every generation since well before mine has reckoned with the problem of knowing that the world is in trouble and needing to feed themselves and their families. We could do so much to curb climate change, but none of it will amount to anything the truly powerful corporations could do, so fuck it. YOLO. May as well get paid before the world burns. I can’t say I’m any better. I have worked for organizations that do things I do not love, things that have made me aware of my complicity in a system I despise. The real sin of capitalism against the individual is the forced participation that requires us to shelve our consciences in order to survive. And while we can, and sometimes do, fight back, our small resistance chips away at an imposing monolith. Are these actions enough?

Smith’s novels often make me believe in the importance of accumulative action. No, I won’t stop the war in Gaza myself, and her latest book, which directly comments on that (to use a disgusting euphemism) conflict, won’t stop it either. But reading about it in Glyph, through the mind of another precocious young person (Smith is not bothered by repeating tropes), made me feel that perhaps change is possible. Maybe the Zoomers might do something. And maybe their older cousins had an impact as well. As well us grumpy fifty-somethings and our Boomer parents. Generations love to reductively blame their elders for ruining the world and leaving the young with a mess to clean, but I can’t always lock in with that complaint. While not ill-founded, blaming the previous generations for the ills of the day ignores all the things none of us understand well enough to address. We’re oppressed and oppressor in often equal measure. I like to remind my students that they are 100% right to be angry with the Boomers and, sure, Gen X, but talk to me in thirty years. Tell me what the next generations are saying about yours. Try telling me they’re wrong. Your fight is not invalidated by whatever you’re doing that may make everything worse. Because we’re all trying our best. Well, most of us.

Smith trucks in this awareness of the struggle and the ease of disenchantment, the lure of getting by, the possibility of resistance, the beauty of community. I can’t figure out how a writer can both begin books the way Smith does in the Seasonal Quartet, with pages that exhaustively catalogue the ugliness of the day, and end with something close to hope. And yes, there are moments in her recent books that make me cringe slightly, a sort of flashing arrow pointing toward not always a happy outcome so much as the possibility that things might just be okay with this damned human race. I cringe, but I also smile.

Gliff and Glyph don’t offer the same experience, but they come damn close. And I may be alone here—reviews of both books speak to their healing optimism specifically evident in each novel’s plucky sisters. In Glyph, the estranged pair come back to each other, which is supposed to be big, though not much was done to establish their rift. Regardless, I got the message: bonds break but also heal. And if both novels rely on young girls imbued with wisdom and power beyond the scope of the average tween or teen, the effect is perhaps diminished the third (fourth?) time. But I was still up for the ride. Because Smith is a clever, fun writer who resists toxic positivity and leaves me feeling better than I felt before I read her. Me, a cranky dude who sees existence as absurd, the universe as chaotic, modern life as foolishly constructed, history as suspect, ambition as folly, leaders as rogues, and failure as inevitable. This sour fucker actually feels something akin to joy while reading Ali Smith. Not the visceral pleasures gotten from wallowing in grindcore metal violence or gallows humor. Not catharsis or solace, but actual joy.

A goddamn miracle.

Working It Out

A modern device of self-torture

What is my pronoun’s antecedent? I cannot say, for even as I work out, I am not always sure why. Or who, what, when, where. I know that I am the one tasked with maintaining my body, and that I am at the age where bouncing back from ill-advised indulgences is not so easy, thus the working out.  Which should answer a few of those five Ws. But there is very little I understand about life, mine or yours. I do think I know some of why I go to the gym. One reason is that I have to, much like I have to go to the dentist. I mean, I don’t have to, but if I don’t, the consequences are a motherfucker.

Start again because this essay, like my workout routine, is all about reps done quickly.

I started going to gym in my thirties because I was tired of being fat and nowhere near done drinking beer or eating pizza. My doctor, who I also started seeing regularly, advised simple cardo stuff and some weight training to build bone density. And I was with someone who wanted to go with me to the gym, which was fun. I like working out with this person. I like working out for her so I can stay in some shape approximating attractive, at least to her.

I once got winked at in a gym locker room. I dined out on that compliment for weeks.

I stopped going to the gym for a few years. Then my back started rebelling. I went to chiropractors. They were helpful to an extent, but most of them tried upselling no end of apparatus that would fit right into a David Cronenberg film. One made my back worse, so I went to a physical therapist who told me that I should work out regularly to keep my core strong and my back functional. And so here I am back at the gym with surprising regularity.

I sometimes think of Henry Rollins and his gym philosophy. Or Kathy Acker who also wrote about the gym in ways that are infinitely more intelligent than the rhetoric of the average podcast bro looksmaxxer. These heroes make me considerably more willing to get out of bed and torture my muscles. Working out is punk. Once upon a time, so was chain-smoking.

My membership with one athletic association permits me access to multiple gyms. The one closest to home is where I work out next to mostly older men and women. The men in this locker room are very comfortable with their bodies. Good for them. My modesty has similarly relaxed as I’ve aged. This is my dumb, lumpy body. It’s sometimes a pain covering it up. Fuck it—take a peek if you must.

The gym I go to on the way to work is full of healthy, toned, buff young people. I do not fit in, but there I am doing my simple exercises while they take workout selfies.

The gym is a microcosm of society. Which is I why I tend to find many of the people at the gym annoying. These are the types of people I have encountered while working out:

The before-mentioned Insta clout chasers

They can handle an impressive amount of weight, but they get mad when you walk between them and the camera recording their dead lifts. They will only workout in front of the mirror. Their athleisure wear would not be inappropriate at a club. The money spent on these garments could feed a Cuban village for months. Their hair and makeup are always on point.

The texters

Disobeying the rule against cell phone usage, they cannot stop playing with their gadgets even when it seems like they get zero pleasure from thumbing and scrolling. Their addiction is so raging that it interrupts their workout, which wouldn’t bother me were I not waiting for them to stop fucking with their phones and finish their sets. They always sit at the machine I want to use, whittling away five minutes on their phones before even thinking about, you know, working out. Their muscles have cooled and recovered by the time they lift something heavier than an Android, making each new set of exercises very much like the first. As a result, they think the ease of lifting this weight means they are in great shape.

The Water Boys

These young men are swoll, shredded, “built different!” and so forth. They have the jock’s deadeye stare as they pump! They wear T-shirts that say Lift Heavy Sh*t because they are so badass even when they censor naughty words. They carry ridiculously oversized water jugs and hydrate because that’s mad important, bro. They grunt. A lot. With every rep. Because they lift a full stack. And grunts are primordial. Bestial. They go beast mode at the gym. They follow gymfluencers who preach surface-level positivity. They never re-rack weights because how else would the rest of us know how much they can lift? They occasionally tell the rest of us what we’re doing wrong and offer to coach us if we’re looking for a trainer. Maybe just like and subscribe?

The Interval Colonizer

The guy working out across three different spaces will get very upset if you use one of the weights or machines he has reserved with his hand towel. He also tends to sit and text between intervals, but give him a minute, dude, he has one more set on that shoulder press machine. 70% chance he won’t wipe down the machines when he’s finally done. Marking his territory.

The Rest of Us

The folks who are not sure why we’re in this facility with these people who are probably lovely in many ways but right now are grunting and sweating and making us feel inadequate. We tend to do our routines quickly, with an eye on the finish line. We get on the treadmill and watch the clock. We feel the best moment of the workout is its conclusion. To be sure, the hardest part of our workout is summoning the will to visit the gym. We regard exercise as necessary but don’t fetishize it the way we do food or literature or knitting or craft beer. We are work-to-live not live-to-work. We don’t grind. We chip away.

I will admit that I feel good after a gym session. Today is no different; I’m in a better mood post-workout, am feeling a lot better than I felt yesterday, a day of doubt and frustration and anger that I can only partially explain. Everything yesterday was dark and wrong, as if the atmosphere had been poisoned by a soul-eroding virus. Today’s sunnier disposition has to do with endorphins, for even as I hated waking up, packing a gym bag, driving to the gym, being among the people in the gym, showering in sub-optimal conditions, well, now all that’s done and the rest of the day is ahead of me, and I feel goddamn happy. Maybe that’s what the “it” in “Working It Out” is: the medieval spleen bile that, were it retained in my body, would keep me a grumpy fucker.

I recall a friend telling me once that vomiting was the body making room for more beer. An unfortunate T-shirt I once saw read: sweat is fat crying. Tears make us feel better because they expel the horrors behind our eyes. Working out is me letting out the bad humors. Which keeps me ready for another day of whatever the fuck is coming.

The Game is the Game: twenty years of The Devil Wears Prada

Allow me to begin by acknowledging that no one gives a damn about what I think. And that no one is being forced to read my blog. No proverbial gun to anyone’s head. And that I have no problem admitting that my opinions and analyses are solely my own and no one need adopt them. I’m likely full of shit.

The reason for this throat clearing is that, after writing this, I’ve routinely gotten emails from Red Hot Chili Peppers fans that are almost as dull and stupid as the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music. I’m somewhat scared of what may come from sharing my thoughts on a much-loved movie, but the thoughts won’t leave me. Best to excise them from the brain via the art of writing, or whatever it is I’m practicing. Silence is an option, always, but (aside from the Chili Peppers fans and haters Google sends my way) not that many people actually read this blog, so fuck it.

Also: I should confess that 1. I’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada numerous times and don’t exactly hate it, just feel it nets far more praise than it merits, and 2. I like nice clothes and lament how slovenly so many of my fellow humans dress, even if I understand the reasons why. For some—too many—it’s a matter of economics. Nice things cost money. Of course, I had a roommate who managed to look dapper as fuck by solely shopping at resale stores and mending clothes rather than cycling through new outfits every few months. And a very stylish friend has assured me that one needs only a modest core of outfits and little crafty attention to their possibilities.

Some people I have known have asserted, not incorrectly, that clothes are a con. I had a student who wanted to write his midterm essay on this very idea, his claim being that the world would be a better place if we all wore sweatpants. I get it—comfort over elegance. And okay, I hardly represent the pinnacle of fashion, but I own a blazer or two and more than a few nice shirts. I appreciate those who give enough of a fuck to present themselves somewhere between modestly and fabulous. So, as I grapple with my feelings on the movie all fashionistas bow to, know that I am not presenting a critique along the lines of those mentioned above.

Okay. Here goes.

The Devil Wears Prada offends me less than many movies of the last twenty years, yet this week—as the unnecessary sequel dominates theater screens—I’m finding myself irked at the number of podcasts and articles declaring the 2006 film a classic, a brilliant film, a testament to the magic of cinema. I mean, it’s fine, right? But is it great?

Perhaps I’m cranky after decades of seeing words like genius and classic being used too elastically. The movie, as a piece of filmmaking, is okay. Entertaining. Charming. Well-executed. Anne Hathaway, the leading lady, is winning and the real star of the movie, Maryl Streep as Miranda, delivers a performance that, while nowhere close to the weighty roles of Sophie’s Choice or Silkwood, is predictably solid. But is she the real star? No. The real star is clothing. Fashion. Capitalism. Hustle culture. Grind mentality. A perverted definition of the American dream.

The movie encapsulates the era from which it was spawned—we see 2006 clearly. Just a hair into the 21st century, 9/11 having briefly caused these United States to examine our hubris before the missiles began flying and the mechanics of the market went back to reminding us that the most important thing is that we work ourselves to death and satisfy the whims of those above us. Because maybe then we’ll get the big job and can be insufferably mean to our underlings and fuck over those most loyal to us who foolishly think they are next in the line of succession. The financial crisis (from which we learned not a fucking thing) was two years away and we were still preaching the gospel of unfettered capitalism. Money = power and clothes and making fun of anyone with a real human body.

I’m taking a minute now to credit an influence, the famous take down of another beloved film, “I Rewatched Love Actually and Am Here to Ruin It for All of You” by Lindy West. What I remember most from this glorious essay is the attention paid to a character who the film consistently regards as fat. The role is played by a human woman who looks like a human woman with a normal human body. Not even an overweight normal human body. Very much like Anne Hathaway’s normal human body in the first half of the The Devil Wears Parada before she goes down a size or two, a feat celebrated by her coworker because how dare she ever have a normal human body?

The first half of The Devil Wears Prada is notable for two things: jokes about the leading lady’s non-existent weight problem and making that character feel like shit for being a heathen ignorant of twin gods named Fashion and Power. That she becomes a congregant long enough to piss off her friends, lose her boyfriend (more on him in a bit), sleep with a random asshole, rise in her horrible boss’s estimation, and spout some girl boss feminism is shown as correct. She has come into the fold, seen the error of her earlier, dismissive ways. The famous cerulean sweater scene plays a trick on the viewer by showing us two very similar belts and having one of Miranda’s minions claim they are so very different. Hathaway’s Andy, our cinematic stand-in, laughs as her coworkers debate the merits of each belt as if they were curing cancer, only to be publicly (pun alert) dressed down by her boss, which is when our perspective is supposed to shift. The film has taken us to task for laughing at the absurdity of these very similar items being described as polar opposites. We can laugh again as the scene concludes, pretending that we too see how silly this uninitiated, frumpy girl is, so “blithely” unaware of how the powerful people in the room hold sway over what sweater she plucks from a discount bin (her real sins: she shops discount, doesn’t think much about her ensemble). Oh, Andy. Really. Grow up and get with the Versace already.

And she does get with the Runway program. She excels at the job, is admitted to the club and basks in all the baubles inclusion offers. But not before complaining to the one person at the office who reluctantly offers her a spoonful of consideration, played by Stanley Tucci. He tells her that she should quit if she isn’t happy there. He knows a million girls who would kill for the gig. So quit. Or shut up and do the job. Dress the part. Swallow the pride and skip lunch and hustle, hustle, grind!

I want to take a moment and discuss something one of my students shared with me regarding not just The Devil Wears Prada but their time working in the fashion industry. Specifically referring to the cerulean sweater scene, they argued that this duality, the knowing how ridiculous the industry is while surrendering to its vast power and basking in its giddy pleasures, perfectly encapsulates a career in fashion. Other briefly-consulted sources back this up. You love it; you hate it; you live it; you doubt every moment. I cannot speak to the veracity of this and am trusting those closer to the industry than I will ever be, but I can see the ways the gig becomes the life, the enthusiasm becomes the religion. And if such emersion into a competitive, mercenary, and gorgeous world is not only possible but necessary for one to thrive, they can hardly be faulted. I suppose. As I cast a few stones, I might admit my own zealous participation in different cults. Aren’t we all navigating systems of power that we bow to while hiding our scorn? Perhaps. I am at a loss to think of an industry free from ethical compromises, one without hierarchies or daily challenges to one’s personal values.

At least in the fashion world there are colorful extravaganzas and beauty. But I can’t stop thinking about all that spectacle as The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in theaters just as the Bezos threw themselves a party at the Met while the world’s burning and the people who slave for these assholes pee in bottles or wear adult diapers to work. If we are in the second Gilded Age then the likely dazzling glitz and haute couture of TDWP2, like the Bezos’ bash, feels tone deaf and crass. In 2006, the first film felt like a fluffy, harmless thing, a peak behind the jeweled walls revealing sights equal parts glamorous and poisonous. But funny. And our avatar, plucky wide-grinning Andy, got out before she spouted anything so disturbing as the wish for a stomach virus to further shrink her stomach (that line, from Emily Blunt’s character, is played for laughs when it should conjure horror). I’ve been told the sequel addresses some realities of 2026—publishing is on its knees, the successful career Andy dreamed of is hers, though now precarious. At some point I will see the movie; for now, I’ll reserve scrutiny and pause the before-mentioned concern that a second sampling of pretty clothes and scheming assholes will taste bitter.

But I digress.

Later in the first movie, Andy’s boyfriend, played by that dude from Entourage (whose name I forget, who I’ll call “that dude from Entourage” and won’t bother looking up because I hate that show), echoes Stanley Tucci’s sentiments. She could just quit if she hates the job so much. Sure, that dude from Entourage doesn’t give her the “You’re not trying; you’re whining” speech and is not nearly articulate or smart enough to verbalize what he is likely thinking: I don’t like seeing my girlfriend this upset over a fucking job. If you’re unhappy, quit. I know… easy to say, and he doesn’t get it, and he’s being selfish, and he’s not supporting her. There’s been a lot of talk lately about his character being the real villain of the film. I’d call him a dopey, bland, garden-variety bro. He and Andy probably shouldn’t be together and are heading in different directions. Which makes them a typical young couple. But he doesn’t want to support her killing herself for a job she is at first infuriated by and later ambivalent about? And he’s the asshole? Not the woman who calls Andy by a different name, gives her impossible tasks, needlessly weight shames her and faults her for acts of fucking nature?

That Andy has a very late-in-the-movie defection is hardly redeeming. Yeah, she tosses her phone in the fountain and quits, but she’s already swallowed enough Kool-Aid that her rejection of her boss’s toxicity does little to sap vitality from the film’s message: wealth and power and handbags are worth any number of principles. It is not only expected that one should kill themselves and fuck people over to get ahead, it’s correct. Anything else is lazy and mediocre. Exceptional people shelve their ethics and sacrifice their every moment to the gig. They don’t think about free time because there is no such thing. There is only the dress, the shoes, the handbag, the glitz, the spectacle, the title, the office, the salary, the accumulation of power measured against the other person’s accumulation of power. This other person may sit next to you in their very own cubicle (bigger than yours?) and they may even become your friend long enough for you to throw them to the wolves if it elevates your position. That’s the game.

Here I am reminded of the mafia films and crime shows that at times glorify horrible behavior. Fans of The Wire get caught up in the gangster chess game, the ways Avon and Stringer out maneuver the police who play by a set of rules not that different from the criminals’. It’s all in the game, as Omar says. The show speaks of citizens and players. The talk feels very applicable to Corporate America. The free market. Wall Street. Silicon Valley. The Government. A notable scene from Veep featured a senator asking someone, “What, is this your first day in the game?” The senator was referring to the mechanics of press conferences and backroom deals. Forget that these events center on the governmental politics of a country and have real-world stakes. It’s just a game. Silicon Valley assholes refer to anyone not at their level as NPCs, people they do not see as real, however much these people are made worse by the tech leaders’ megalomania. It’s all a game. Whoever dies with the most toys wins. Cops, gangsters, politicians, brokers, tech bros, magazine editors, executive assistants, chefs, mechanics, even (gulp) university professors. All game players.

At the worst moment of The Devil Wears Parada, Andy defends her boss against the criticism (monster, tyrant, demanding) by rightly pointing out that if Miranda were a man the world would call him smart and driven and praise his business acumen. Salient point. Sexism is definitely a thing. But so is toxic productivity. The film never really questions the culture that insists one should work as hard as not only Andy does but surely her boss has before getting where she is. And Miranda’s job is never safe; she is forever dealing with the vipers plotting against her. She makes moves to ensure her place at the top, moves that require some moral flexibility. That’s the game, and Miranda plays it best. We should idolize her, learn from her, defend her, never ask if the game she’s playing is venomous. Bigger questions about capitalism and the deleterious physical and psychological effects of climbing corporate ladders be damned. There are handbags to hawk and human beings to destroy.

Revisiting Bukowski, a Sort of Defense

As the years pile up, I am happy that my curiosity remains intact, somewhat. I don’t feel the same compulsion to know about everything the way I once did—my old practice of scanning the Chicago Reader to see exactly which movies (plural!) I would see that coming weekend, the hours spent reading articles about important musicians, those afternoons in used bookshops happening upon my next obsession, those days are sorta over. I’ve found my canon, and while there’s space for new music and a new favorite film, I have collected my go-tos and will happily revisit them as my fifties fall well behind me and I’m off toward the grave.

A personal canon is a good thing. I have my favorite this and that, fifty-plus years of amassing the art that speaks to me, for me, against me. And though I’ve eased away from cultural omnivorism, there’s still hunger for more, even as I have far less interest in whatever the hell is going on now. I’m sure the new Wet Leg is great, but I’m just recently discovering Swell Maps.

As with the posts to this blog thing about the Red Hot Chili Peppers (which nets me messages from randos, most in agreement, some making facile remarks) and A Clockwork Orange,  I had it in mind today to revisit some of Charles Bukowski’s writing because there was a time when I read the guy. A long time ago. When I was young and that sort of thing appealed to me.

I don’t think of Hank much these days, but last week a student mentioned him in class, and I had a weird nostalgia for the time when I was reading Last Night of the Earth Poems and finishing the last cigarette (“one before I go to bed”) of the day and falling asleep thinking that a writer had to be, above all else, honest even if being honest meant being vulnerable and ugly. Risk, goddamnit!

I don’t know that I was wrong, but there a lot of ways to be honest and vulnerable that don’t require so much performative edginess. Which is not to say that Bukowski was faking his drunken asshole persona, but scores of lesser writers and bigger assholes have emulated Hank to significantly lesser effect.

The last thing I intend is an apology for reading the patron saint of drunken writers. Lit bros aplenty will pen their peans for Hank. This is more me thinking about why I have kept every one of his books (well, up to a point—the dude has more posthumous releases than Tupac) as opposed to many by Kerouac and Hunter Thompson I let go once their madcap scribblings struck me as juvenile. Thompson was the better craftsman, and Kerouac, for all his rambling, could land on something close to beautiful when his head cleared. Still, despite Bukowski’s prose sometimes clunking, and more than a few of his poems feeling unnecessary, his work remains compelling.

I might chalk it up to the man behind the poems/stories/novels. Not just the larger-than-life stuff, but the part of his biography that always inspired me. This was a man who rejected so much, who had zero time for the academic classroom, whose writing bore few marks of the editor’s scissors, and yet while he lacked Faulkner’s flourishes or Joyce’s maximalist glories, his simple, direct prose achieved something singular. Unlike his one-time hero Hemingway, Buk’s largely unadorned sentences feel natural, flowing, energetic. When he’s on, he’s really something—funny and heartbreaking despite the cheap bravado. But maybe because he earned the right to swagger, I don’t mind all the tough guy shit. Hemingway always read like a man in search of experience that would make him the legend he was in his head, whereas Bukowski didn’t chase wars or bullfights or deep-sea fishing. He chased solitude, self-destruction, the beauty that appears “as the / spirit / wanes.” Misanthropic, misogynist, malcontent, he definitely has his warts, many of which fueled his most interesting efforts.

Of course, the same bestial wails that continue drawing readers repel those looking for something like refinement. But he has that. Not in the sense of regality; Bukowski’s elegance comes from the simplicity of his ideas. He was at his best when he detailed the experience of the lowlife like an American Jeffrey Bernard without the British writer’s dry wit. The hardscrabble existence and skid row poetry that, when it was honest, offered complexities. But when Hank’s aim was profundity, when he really tried for something more than a slice of gritty life, he came off as another crank at the end of the bar who you were despite to pawn off on the next unlucky bastard bellying up.

A friend told me that she’d seen plenty of men whose dating profiles named Bukowski as their favorite writer. Automatic swipes left. I get it. Bukowski was a prick, albeit an interesting one, but the dudes who love him can be insufferable. Then again, I’ve heard women say that about Joyce fans, too. And one woman said she’ll never read Kurt Vonnegut because of the number of boys who have insisted she give Slaughterhouse Five a shot. Were I still a single man (perish the fucking thought!), I wonder which writer would send me away from a potential date. Nicholas Sparks? Colleen Hoover? No. Wait—Candace Bushnell. Maybe. I dunno… no woman has ever beset me with unending praise for their favorite writer, not because women don’t have favorite writers but because women don’t go on and fucking on about all the writers I NEED to read. I’ve learned more from women than men, yet no woman—aside from those employed as teachers—has ever tried to teach me anything.

Suffice it to state that Bukowski’s attitude toward women was rarely palatable. Part of his package. I don’t know anyone who goes to Hank for nuanced takes, but I will offer mild defense in the form of a few remembered poems and stories. At times, when he dropped the word “whore” from his lexicon, Buk could be a softy. His poems to his wife that speak of her adding years to his life, him pleading that when she takes herself away please do it slowly, his crying jags, tears running from his face like “heavy senseless things,” the stories where he communicates his madness and lets the reader see that all the posturing is actually covering up something so much worse than what’s on the page… I can’t help but find something in those highs that make me okay with the lows.

And there are lots of lows.

A few good texts stand out, mostly the novel Factotum and the poetry collections Mockingbird Wish Me Luck and War All the Time. A handful of stories have stuck with me— “The Blanket,” “Great Poets Die in Stinking Pots of Shit,” “The Birth, Life, and Death of an Underground Newspaper”— and the travel book Shakespeare Never Did This is an overlooked gem. But this list represents a drop in the Bukowski ocean. Among those waves are stories like “The Fuck Machine” and “All the Pussy We Want” that don’t do much more than send my eyes rolling. His story of nearly drinking himself to death and ending up in a charity ward remains high in my estimation, but for all those hits there are heaps of misses that a good editor would have caught. John Martin may have been a more hands-off editor or maybe he knew that unfiltered Bukowski was what kept the Black Sparrow flying. Or maybe what we have is the result of editing? In which case, what the fuck was left on the cutting room floor?

Bukowski’s many tales where women are little more than pieces of ass who lie and break his heart send me to a different shelf. I like to think I was never as big a prick. I have not always been a good guy or a great boyfriend, but I never absorbed Hank’s sexism so much I casually regurgitated it to some unfortunate female. Or maybe I did? Who remembers—but damn, I can certainly see the man I don’t want to be when I read his pages. Which is where this reevaluation gets sticky. Perhaps by reading these tales of ordinary madness and notes of a dirty old man I am afforded vicarious thrills, the voyeur’s permission to celebrate the worst on offer in Women or Love is a Dog From Hell. I can perform as an ally while letting this overt misogynist scratch some terrible itch I don’t want to touch.

Even when I had my head somewhat up Bukowski’s ass, all those years back when I thought Tarantino made good movies, I never thought he was the equal of Faulkner or Eliot. I knew better then, and I know a lot better now. The marvels I’ve witnessed in Joyce’s novels, the hysterical tragicomedy in Beckett, Calvino’s fabulist wonders, not to mention the slew of women who are, on their worst days, better writers (Jeanette Winterson, Ali Smith, Virginia Woolf, Jessie Fauset, Ann Quinn), Buk can’t touch any of that. Had I one writer to bring with me to a deserted island… I don’t know who I would choose. But it would not be Bukowski. Yet… there they are, those books. They take up so much real estate, an entire shelf on one of my bookcases. Most of those books currently staring me in the face are not worth keeping. They are there really to remind me of the kid I was who insisted that reading every Bukowski book wouldn’t yield diminishing returns. What a dumb dumb.

I lent a copy of Women to my friend Kevin. His review: “I could’ve drank. I could’ve fucked. I drank.” Nailed it.

I have not given Bukowski much thought in these last, oh, thirty years. But I see him popping up often in my Instagram feed, pictures of the man somehow looking both bloated and desiccated, shirt buttoned well below the top, beer bottle in hand, some plucked quote over the photo and scores of dudes in the comments celebrating the guy. Fine. Most of their praise is defensible, though from a few lauds come whiffs of manosphere sulfur. Ironic since Buk would have had no time for their dumb causes and idiotic worldview.

The last defense, and the only one I really care about, comes from the novel Women wherein the Bukowski stand-in Henry Chinaski responds to a girlfriend who, while readying her departure from his wretched existence, insists that she’ll one day be a bigger name, that she has more talent than him. Chinaski replies something along the lines of every baby in every crib has more talent than him. The difference is, he does the work. Which is pretty much the best thing we can get from the Bukowski example. The drinking, screwing, gambling, fucking off, quitting jobs, living like a cockroach—all of that overly romanticized stuff is for young males. (Until they get older and realize how much they like money and comfort. Until they reach middle-age and read Walden and daydream about escaping to a cabin in the woods.) But the work ethic is most admirable. Bukoski hated talking about writing and writing workshops and all of that. He just opened a bottle of wine, turned on some classical music, and wrote. Every night. A routine. Imagine that coming from the man mythologized as a loafing reprobate souse.

Bukowski was right. He did not possess admirable talent, at least not as we so often think of it: the fevered genius with greatness beyond understanding who produces visionary works, whose every utterance is a psalm. No, Buk’s example is one that has always inspired me more than the Great Man bullshit. One need not be a genius, just dedicated. Willing to do the work. Sit down, write. As much as possible. As often as possible. Regularly. The words will come. The pages will grow. But if you wait around for divine inspiration, you’re fucked. I’ve written a few books following this example.

Until the Bubbles Cease

This year, I was not invited to represent English at my university’s Lifeboat Debate event. I had that honor the previous three spring semesters. Nothing lasts. Nothing should.

I am not offended. Honestly. I assume that the new crop of students who organize the event don’t know me. Or they don’t like me. Either is possible, but there’s a big dumb part of me that wants to believe I was not asked because of what I said last year.

Quick context: The Lifeboat Debate is a gathering of instructors and students who are tasked with defending their existence. The idea is that the world is flooding and there is only room on a lifeboat for three academic disciplines. Why should mine be invited onboard? Of what value is English?

Of course, the very question offends me to my core, though I realize that not everyone intuitively understands why they ought to practice writing and read a lot of books. Thus, my job. But my job has morphed from composition and literature instructor to detective, and I find myself reiterating the value of functional literacy to a population that increasingly sees no issue with exporting their skills to AI. So maybe the debate has more purpose than I thought?

I would not have won. I never do. At best, I get second or third prize. Last year, I came in second, which I attribute to reverse psychology. Which will make more sense when you read my speech.

My colleague who teaches Sustainability Studies always wins. Of course. The totality of his argument: Who likes eating food and drinking clean water?

I’ve never been competitive, but I will admit that one year I was compelled to fight for my discipline after another colleague resorted to pure pathos and misrepresented Henry David Thoreau’s story. Otherwise, I tend to let someone else take the gold. Forever steeped in punk rock ethos, I’m content staying niche. The real heads know.

And then last year I had a thought: English Comp and Lit should not be saved. I see where the world’s headed. There’s no place for me there.

Here’s the speech I gave as my introductory statement. While I cannot say that it is truly to blame, I, again, want to believe that it had an impact sufficient to deny my invitation to the very event where I would surely be denied hypothetical survival.

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.”

That’s from an Oscar Wilde book I read as an English major.

I don’t 100% agree, but I understand the sentiment.

Literature and writing have utility, but that makes them much less interesting than the reasons I got into this absurd field of study. And while I respectfully thank you for having me, the idea of defending those reasons in this manner is antithetical to both how and why I’ve spent my life.

Reading, writing, literary study… these are labors of love. They have little value to most people, or at least so say the market, culture, and consumers who believe art is owed to them for free, constantly streaming and all-too disposable.

Let’s be honest: English study is a pain, what with its emphasis on care and reflection and the slipperiness of its most interesting theories. Worse, being an English major or literary-minded person means accepting uncertainty. And these days, no one is comfortable in uncertainty. Literature doesn’t pretend to know anything for sure (unless it’s rubbish posing as literature). What good is that?

Yes, there is “inspirational” literature, but more times than not, you literary-minded suckers will have your hearts broken, your optimism challenged, your ability to understand thwarted, your sense of correctness decimated. At best, you’ll be better prepared for how unprepared we are in this world.

Let me stress this: English doesn’t assure you anything. The language is built on contradictions, exceptions, irregularities, baffling possibility. And worst of all: you’ll never master it. None of us do. Of what use is this to the society you’re rebuilding? Well… plenty, actually, but I can’t pretend that use is quantifiable. And while, unlike some of my esteemed colleagues, I would never assume my discipline’s value is self-evident, I don’t care to beg for shelter in this STEM storm.

So, if my survival is contingent on somehow justifying my chosen discipline’s utility, you should force my face into the cold water until the bubbles cease.

Thank you.

Too Much Joy

 Last week, I had the pleasure (note that word—it will come up again) of reading from my latest book to a group of people gathered at a literary event. I do this from time-to-time because it allegedly helps sell books, though the true purpose behind these gatherings is promoting literature, sharing creativity, engaging with other writers and literary citizens, and honoring the oral tradition of literature, especially poetry.

As much as I can be accused of cynicism and having a “caustic wit” (as said by a former manager at my first office gig before I knew to keep my mouth shut), I do believe in the true idea behind literary gatherings, as described above. Because I’ve never sold many books at any of these events. Not enough, at least, to justify leaving the comfort of my apartment. In this way, I might be called, if not an optimist, an idealist.

At this reading, I shared a bit from my book that I think went over well. A few chuckles and some nice words after, always appreciated. One friend said about the passage I shared, “Acerbic as always.” Another person, who enjoyed the spectacle enough to buy a book, asked if I’ve always been this way. I assume they meant bitter.

I suspect people might describe me as a relatively amiable fellow. Sarcastic and fatalistic, sure, but happy to be among good friends, smiling as much as scowling, if not more. In short: I feel I project a mostly sunny vibe. But if you read my stuff, you’d probably disagree.

At times, I am a bitter, disappointed, frustrated, angry, disillusioned, disaffected, snarky bastard given to the darkest humor and seemingly nihilistic philosophies. “Seemingly” because nihilism is a lazy accusation. I am not nihilistic. Nihilism is easy. And kinda dumb. Existentialism is more the meat. And absurdism even closer to what I might claim as a governing worldview. Because an absurdist does not cover up the horrors of existence with platitudes, positive or negative. They see the struggle, the meaninglessness, and they fight anyway. Anyone can give up. Where’s the fun in that?

If there’s an aspect of modern life, specifically in the U. S. of A., that I don’t love, it’s the imperative to enjoy. Zizek pointed out the way Americans feel an obligation to be happy. It’s baked into our advertisements, pop music, and “Live your best life” T-shirt slogans. It’s not just a desire for joy, thoroughly understandable; it’s the necessity for it. Not being joyous in the land of the free global center for first world capitalist material pleasures is an admission of failure, a glaring fault. Growing up, I heard people wonder, “Who can’t be happy with all of this?” Because the “good life” was not a goal but an edict.

ISLES, that wonderful band from the UK, have a record called Joy as an Act of Resistance. While the record is great, the title conveys something I rather like: that which is being resisted by joy requires some consideration. I mean, you can’t resist without acknowledgement. Joy is not simply the denial of horror so much as the rebellion against it, the refusal to let it completely consume us. And one can find joy in resistance and fight, maybe better joy than escapist pleasure affords.

To be sure, most people can both experience joy and keep an eye on the creeping nightmare, but I suspect we’ve been made to feel that talking about, feeling, or processing anything other than joy is bad bad bad

I have more than a few friends who wring joy from aesthetic pursuits, alcohol and drugs, or “retail therapy.” (I do the same, for the record, so don’t @ me, ideal and possibly nonexistent reader.) I know avowed sensualists, Wildean aesthetes, bone marrow and truffle fry fine diners, collectors of rarities, fashion designer zealots, and others who may bemoan capitalism as quickly as they apply its balm. I do my version of this—I buy more than I need. I know the temporary joy or exchanging money for shiny things. I like my single malts and pretty books, even the ones I may never read. I prefer clothes that are as attractive as they are comfortable and will shell out sums that once would have sickened me just so I can have another flat cap or handsome jacket. But I know that none of this equals meaningful action. To quote Marc Maron, I’m just buffering disappointment.

Pleasure is the thing. We find temporary pleasure in the promise of capitalist joy. We see anything impeding pleasure as wrong, an obstacle that must not be scaled so much as obliterated. Much has been made of the need for friction, so much that I don’t need to get too deep into all that. I can say that the lure of technology and the looming AI “revolution” will be a world without friction where we can enjoy unobstructed pleasure.

Call me (again) cynical, but I don’t buy it. What world will we create that is considerably better? What world have we created already? What frictions are left that are so terrible? Obviously, plenty, and my questions betray plenty of privilege, but forgetting for a minute the vast societies that still want for clean water and the basic infrastructure of the developed world, what more does, say, the USA need? Obviously a lot, most pertaining to socio-political matters, none of which will be addressed by new gadgets. I suppose as the disparities deepen and the middle class vanishes and literacy evaporates and democracy fully crumbles, we’ll have better CGI in our movies and faster delivery from Uber Eats. Pleasures fast and base!

The place where I find the worst examples of human behavior, mine definitely included, is social media. I am the worst version of myself when I’m on Facebook. I’m a slightly better version of Vince on Instagram, as that is mostly the Vince who posts photos and enjoys self-absorption without a lot of words making things worse. My friends on social media fall neatly into one these groups: those who wish to “keep it light” and often strike me as playing on while the Titanic sinks, those who rage against the machine and exhaust themselves exercising futile muscles, and those who just want to pick fights and talk shit. The first group bugs me the most. I get the tendency of the second—they’re pissed and they need an outlet, however unhealthy. The third are also looking for an outlet, through their indignation is considerably less righteous. The first… what are they (we) doing sharing evidence of our best lives and our lovely dinners and our gaudy baubles? I’m as delusional, distracted, and dopamine addicted as the next fucker, sure, but I often suspect the next fucker thinks their solace in pleasure is somehow noble. At least they’re not sharing articles about whatever the hell Trump did this week or yelling at people for using socially outdated language. No, they’re (we’re) just feeding data to machines, making Zuckerberg richer, and furthering a truly dumb culture.

But it’s fun!

Another criticism leveled my way: pessimism. Okay, fine. A little. But I’ve always found that optimism and privilege go hand-in-hand. And, really, I’m not a total pessimist. Just a frustrated romantic. Now that I’m thinking of it, perhaps the reason these labels sting a bit is because they’re supposed to. Joyful optimism is enviable elevation of oneself above the world-weary. It suggests superiority, thus the barbs of “pessimist” and “cynic.” But this may be another reason why I sometimes find positivity toxic. There’s an ugly condescension in there along with the before-mentioned social advantage. It’s easy to be an optimist. There have never before been so many distractions from that which might engender pessimism. And while I can’t advise succumbing to total pessimism, a dash of jaded realism goes a long way, especially when mixed with hope. Hope is far more nourishing than optimism and joy. Transient by nature, joy needs constant chasing. It’s too fleeting to ever be sustainable or world changing.

None of these abstractions are mutually exclusive. I suspect we are all perpetually wavering between hope and despair. It’s understandable that we’d want to push away the dark via whatever device, content, cloying pop song, or delicious poison we find. I’m just trying to find balance. Best we can do, right? (How pessimistic.)

Fuck AI

Last week I had the supreme displeasure of both encountering the AI generated video of Donald Trump playing “Don’t Stop Believing” and realizing that I watched the entire dam thing. However much I dislike the looky-loos gawking at car accidents on the road, I just couldn’t look away at this metaphorical three-car pile-up.

There may be no more perfect song for Trump, or his digital minions, to have chosen. “Don’t Stop Believing” is not the worst song, but I’ve grown to hate it not because Trump “ruined it,” as one friend said in response to the video, but because the song was overplayed well before the White Sox snagged it during their World Series run. The song has long struck me a lab experiment by scientists tasked with making something perfectly anthemic. Maybe it’s just cranky ol’ me again weighing in on something popular, but while I try not to be purposefully contrarian, most of Journey’s music, in my estimation, is as meretricious as Quentin Tarantino’s films.

All that stated, why wouldn’t Trump use this song? It has an immediate appeal that grates upon re-listen. It’s unquestionably embraced by the youngest Boomers and oldest Gen Xers who remember a time when “Music kicked ass, man!”  It’s as catchy as herpes. It boasts some weird Americana quality of small-town girls from the Midwest and dudes taking midnight trains without regard for their destination, a classic ramblin’ man hobo myth that Bob Dylan rode to success. A million overfed CEOs think they too are bred of similar scrappy stock. In short: the song is bullshit. But bullshit can be fun.

A Jim Jefferies’ comedy bit from 2016 comes to mind. In regard to Trump, he said (before discussing what an idiot Trump is and how stupid anyone would be to believe a word he says, much less vote for him): “He’s a lot of fun.” Which I’ve long realized is the appeal—Trump, like Journey, offers some easily digestible good times. Be it a color-by-numbers rock-and-roll sing along or a speech full of grievance and bluster, asses will fill seats and arms will hoist lighters to the sky.

Rather than go deeper on Trump than I care too, I’m going to turn toward the real subject of this blogpost thing: AI. Because, like Trump, AI steals more of my attention than I would like, but this is the world I live in, hoo hum.

AI has already been imbued with importance by the same assholes who promised us that the web would be a democratizing, liberating force for good, promises born of short-sightedness or deceit, I’m not sure. It has also been met with dire warnings and dooming predications penned by journalists, scholars, and media figures who rightly worry that this emerging technology might send them further into obsolescence. Most folks, from what I gather, reside in the fat middle, the place where soft skeptics can say, “Well, there’s probably some good it’ll do, but we’d better be careful” and the average internet user will either smile or shrug at the marvels of this brave new world.

I reside in the “fuck AI” camp, at least as far as art, media, politics, and education are concerned. I make that last qualification because I’m sure there are AI applications that could redound to some benefits, specifically in medicine and engineering (though I hope that scientists, doctors, and engineers retain some authority and and not outsource all their expertise to the robots). I admit my bias—I teach English, mostly composition, and thus AI has turned me from an instructor to a detective. When tasked with actually writing an essay, the temptation to use large language models is too great. Some of my students have succumbed, which has only generated mediocre, at best, work and a few awkward conversations.

My English department has discussed the issue of AI cheating at some length, the result being that we should do a better job explaining why people should work on their composition skills. We too often assume that ideas we think important—creation, critical thinking, exploration, play, revision, rhetorical attention, diction, tone, and voice—are self-evident. We’re kinda dumb that way.

A result of not using AI to write this blogpost: my wrists are sore because I cannot type properly. My morning has disappeared. I’ve doubted at least seven of the above verb and adjective choices—never mind the adverbs. I’ve meandered a bit, haven’t I? And used more than a few words Grammarly would advise changing. But I have a better understanding of my feelings about AI than I did when I started, or at least I have the words to begin describing my feelings. The feelings were in me, painfully turning to thoughts in my head, fuzzy though they were. By forcing those thoughts to life through imperfect representation, i.e. by assigning specific words as stand-ins for the thoughts, I have done what people have done since time began: expressed myself as best I could via an imperfect system called “language.” Joan Didion made that famous statement about writing to discover what she thought, which is sorta what I’m preaching. And while I’m sure ChatGPT can be of some assistance with this task, I am doubly certain that something crucial is lost by relying on AI’s help with anything other than the polishing of writing. (More on that in a bit.)

Kurt Vonnegut made a statement in the 90s that has always stuck with me. When asked by some tech rag—Wired, I believe—about the Internet, he said he preferred The Encyclopedia Britannica and good old printed matter, as (and this is me paraphrasing), through downloads and software, humans have been robbed of the process of discovering. Vonnegut remains a hero, but even while reading this bit from him I knew that, while I was sure he was right, the sentiment had an old man quality to it. And people seem keen to dismiss anything coming from an old person’s mouth, regardless of value. The new is always given more shine.

Uncle Kurt may have had a point. The immediacy of information technology has altered us in ways we might not care about, but still… I do worry that GPS has atrophied mental muscles that once allowed me to navigate my way out of being lost. I used to fairly easily figure out which way to go. Now I rely on my phone to tell me when to turn right or left. Okay, I don’t miss scrutinizing maps or wandering into the unfamiliar, but what have I lost by relying on this tech? The process of discovering, as KV stated? I can only imagine more of this loss when AI goes from novel to banal.

While the internet has been (to put it lightly) a mixed blessing, and while my Gen X brain wants to opine that things were better before this technology’s ubiquity, I don’t want to go back to an allegedly “better time.” There’s never really been such a thing. Anyone who thinks there was is as equally deluded as those who uncritically embrace change.

But… I really don’t look forward to AI’s development, implementation, and inevitable corruption. We’re already accepted that this alien is here, that it is inevitable, and ceded our agency to the artificial, which feels pretty goddamn close to giving up. Talk of regulating it, on the rare occasions there is any, is feckless. Trump’s stupidly titled Big Beautiful Bill Act (bill act? did he never watch Schoolhouse Rock?) includes language that would ban states from regulating AI. Tech zealots scoff at any mention of checking their power, tricking the world into thinking their growth is of paramount importance and saying things like, “It’s either us or China!” These are the same people who dismiss college education, though if they had stuck it out in higher ed they may have taken a few humanities classes and studied basic logical fallacies, “either/or” frameworks being among the most elementary.  

I can’t see this working out well, but that may be due to my baseline gloomy worldview. Gen Z students tell me I’m too pessimistic. Ditto the Boomers. Maybe my absurdist despair is generational, but I have yet to see the net benefits of introducing something as world-altering as AI into daily life. I know, I know… it’s a tool, and tools are not to blame. Still, tools, as Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman argued, have biases that move us more than we think. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. An old adage that Postman used to illustrate how tools alter us, even subtly, moving from this maxim to ask what the computer person values. To a man with a computer, everything is data, he more or less stated. To a kid with a smartphone, everything is an image worthy of Instagram. To a society filled with AI deep fakes, every news item is an opportunity for suspicion. Every action not entirely organic is marred by doubt. A person overly online, subject to algorithms created to maximize engagement and outrage, has every bias confirmed. Sure, we’ve always been prejudicial and willfully ignorant, given to conspiratorial thinking and panic. Tech hasn’t created any of that, but what good can come from unregulated AI that only amplifies our worst tendencies? That would be the same as giving the worst person you know unlimited cocaine.

Okay, sure, I’ll have a whole new system to get pizza delivered and endless hours of incredibly shop-worn content. Yippee?

On the subject of polishing writing through AI, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I use spell/grammar check like anyone else. I also look up some words and right click the fuck out of others in search of more precise synonyms. The autocorrect fixes are not always unwelcome. These are some very basic forms of AI, right? Okay, but the more sophisticated tools— Grammarly, ChatGPT, and their ilk— seem set to corporate. The tone they recommend is very often one that flattens language. Even the LLMs, which can be instructed to “write” in different voices, default too often to the dullest English. What else would one expect from scrapping the entire internet for examples of how humans put words together? Well… I’d actually expect something more dynamic, considering the vastness of texts online, not to mention the entirety of canonized work in the public domain and the countless poems from past and present housed by Poetry Foundation, just to name one resource. And while I’m sure someone could show me a more interesting, fresh, exciting composition penned (sorta) by Gemini or some other LLM, my concern is that surrendering to AI writing tools will deaden language, or at least further the fallacious belief in one “correct” English standard. There have already been studies on how AI discriminates against dialects, a sort of codified indictment against any culture not white and upper middle-class or above. And while this very blogpost you’re reading (as if!) is riddled with rhetorical idiosyncrasies that may deter readers not down with my unique voice, I kinda don’t care. I know my audience. It’s tiny enough where I can relish in writing the way I want, which betrays my interests, tendencies, and stylistic concerns. I’ve long stumped for style over plot in literature and more rumination in nonfiction. I’m no enemy of the polished and audience-tested, which has its place depending on task, but to insist that all writing resemble an office memo in tone, to rail against anything that dares not be “tight,” is to argue for uniformity. And that offends my aging punk ass.

On Certainty

1

The day when I’ll know enough to feel “informed” or “wise” or simply “aware” will never come. That I’ll never be anything more than unsure is one thing I am sure of. That and that it’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition.

Balancing ongoing uncertainty with an often-regrettable tendency to speak my mind proves difficult. In order to opine with anything resembling authority, I attempt silencing the part of my head that reminds me how little I know for certain. And I fail a lot of the time, though when I do utter something one might receive as a thought based in certainty, the falsity of that confidence offends even me. I can only hear pumped up bluster masking doubt. Which is why I’m suspicious of all who seem certain.

2

Admission at the start:

I am likely full of shit. About most things and definitely about politics, which I am especially given to debating with friends and strangers in the most loathsome of spaces: social media. That stated, I continue engaging in conversations that will do little, if anything, to further the conversation or achieve any tangible result. I work for a university, so you’ll understand that ineffectual discourse and navel gazing are my métier.

If I find a life raft in this honest confession, well, it’s rickety. Nevertheless, I’m comfortable riding these rocky waves of uncertainty.

3

Yesterday I reminded my literature class that it’s okay to not understand the book we were discussing, Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. Aside from being (in one student’s assessment) a “weird” book, the novel is somewhat of a mystery. Or not. I’m probably being lazy by dismissing any meaning or authorial intent, but I also don’t care.

There are plenty of ways I read The Third Policeman offering plenty of ideas and opportunities for conversation. Which is all I asked of my students, that they think about the book and speak about it with me and with each other. They were up for the task, even if a few admitted that they disliked the book. (No one’s perfect.) The most common interpretation, that O’Brien’s novel is about a terrible person who commits murder and is damned, fits well enough, though judging characters as good or bad feels a bit facile to me. Sure, the narrator of The Third Policeman is, as his author described him, “a heel and a killer,” and we can condemn his actions accordingly, but… what else ya got?

The book, in my estimation, is an answer to the 19th century tales where the criminals find salvation through repentance, a sort of updating of Crime and Punishment, although—this book coming at the end of the Modernist era—our narrator does not come to Jesus, so to speak. His confession, which occurs at the very start, isn’t born of regret. It’s all so matter-of-fact. I killed a guy. Ho hum.

Flann O’Brien’s novel being evidence of the 20th century pendulum swinging away from Victorian moralizing is, of course, just one quite possibly flawed interpretation, but, as I always say, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

My students took notes while I made this point about The Third Policeman, though I immediately reminded them that this was just me thinking aloud along with them and not a verifiable truth about the intention of the novel. Then I reminded them that the classroom is a place for testing shaky interpretations and impressions. Their midterm papers, I said, demand more supported claims, but the classroom can (should?) be a space for trotting out ideas that may not have wings. Through articulation of those unsettled ideas (as if there are any other kind), we reach a place where we have a dash more assurance. We try out things in the discussion that we might then buttress with some academic research, which, in this literary game, is itself debatable.

I always liked literary study and the arts in general for this reason: uncertainty. That The Third Policeman is a great or important novel, one that is chock full of interpretative possibilities… of all this I am certain. But while I do have the power to inflict it on students, I can’t force anyone to adopt my certainty. You might think it’s a piece of shit. Bully for you.

4

The need to be sure is a bummer. It stops my students from raising their hands. I want to blame social media. My Gen Z students, those digital natives, grew up with gadgets and have seen what happens to someone making a claim online that turned out to be if not false, well, dubious. People get piled on, @ed, harassed, bullied, shamed, all that shit. Or maybe just a little mocked. None of that feels great. Why risk saying or tweeting or venturing any guess or stating any opinion in such a culture?

But a classroom is a place where we should feel comfortable proffering opinions. If we all agree that we’re there to share perspectives and mutually inform, and if we all remain respectful, then that grand dialectic bears fruit.

The above paragraph is evidence that I am not, as I am so often judged, completely cynical.

5

Every generation feared raising their hand in class, right? My Gen Z theory has more holes than Swiss cheese.

6

After we wrapped discussion on The Third Policeman, I had my students watch After Hours. To me, these works make sense together; After Hours features a guy who, while not a murderer, makes some poor choices throughout his evening in 1980s lower Manhattan. And like The Third Policeman, it has an other-worldly feel, though considerably less surreal. And there are themes of inescapability and damnation, cyclical structure, and repeating motifs.

Slightly irksome: my students felt the need to judge the protagonist of After Hours. Paul, our hero of sorts, doesn’t read Marcy’s signals well, tries repeatedly to have sex with her, abandons her when he finally gets the picture, loses his temper, ignores people… in other words, he’s not a 100% good person. Kind of like every person ever.

Maybe, I told my students, I judge him less harshly for not immediately dropping his sexual overtures because the film was made in the mid-1980s alongside far more rape-filled cinematic larks like Revenge of the Nerds and Sixteen Candles. Compared to those depictions of criminal sexual assault, Paul from After Hours is a saint. A rationalization of bad behavior… sure. But I can watch the film and feel grand whereas I can’t go back to the 80s comedies with their “Ain’t rape is funny” gags.

My students understood my point, I think. But they were certain in their assessment of Paul as a terrible person deserving punishment. They are more interested in analyzing characters from a very simple and frankly dull “good/bad” framework. And here I thought we were past simple binaries. 

7

Today, while making quesadillas, I flipped the tortillas as I always do: by hand. A spatula makes the operation safer, but quién es mas macho? YO SOY! That stated, I accidently placed my finger on the comal a second too long. That hurt.

If I place my hand on a hot stove, I’ll be burned. On this, and maybe this alone, I can express certainty.  

8

Remember this nugget from Ben Franklin: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

The statement is only half true. Just ask Jeff Bezos.

Also, I was pretty certain that writers should avoid “to be” verb phrases whenever possible. A teacher in grad school drummed that into my head. But the above quote not only has a “to be” in it, the “nothing can be said” is kind of clunky. So much for the great founding fathers.

9

Things of which I am certain:

10

The worst, grossest certainly is found, of course, online, Facebook being ground zero for certainty. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg lessened content moderation across Meta and boasted about the company returning to its free speech roots. Born in his dorm when he drunkenly objectified Harvard girls, Facebook morphed into a democracy breaking machine that also helped spread misinformation resulting in a literal genocide in Myanmar. So, yeah… Zuck’s not wrong about the company’s roots.

As alluded to earlier, I am the worst version of myself when I fight with people on Facebook. I write things that are redolent of certainty, even if I try to qualify statements. The replies to the stupid things I add to stupid “conversations” are even more certain. At least I try to add words like “seem” and “perhaps.” But my cyber interlocutors drip with certainty. They know for goddamn sure that they are right, their opinions and cheerful dismissal of anything that contradicts their politics are iron fucking clad. How can they be wrong? They know what they know. Things were better before. Simpler in 1984. 1974. 1954. Back before they were asked to revise a minuscule percentage of their lexicon or think of the experiences of humans unlike themselves.

In these stupid spaces, I act horribly, possessed by the certainty of my opinions and politics.

11

I like mystery. I accept it. I don’t know if there’s a god. I suspect not. If there is, that god is indifferent at best. I lean atheist, but I just don’t know. And I don’t care. The universe is likely empty and meaningless and random and pure fucking chaos. Fine. So be it.

What used to attract me to Existentialism—the little of it I understand—is the freedom it offers. No god equals no meaning to life other that which the individual assigns it. So, for me, the meaning of life is some jumble of art, a good cup of tea, single malt Scotch, my dog on my lap, the relationship I’ve built with my wife, the ongoing joy of laughing at the absurd. And writing a thing or two now and then.

If I can claim a philosophy, it’s Absurdism, which is like Existentialism only with better jokes. Speaking of philosophies, the garments of Agnosticism fit better than those of the believer or the atheist, as agnostics humble themselves by confessing that they can never prove or disprove god’s existence. And most of us absurdist agnostics are happy not knowing. We’ll learn the truth soon enough.